


The Prohibitive Standards of Hygiene

by Chash



Series: filthverse [1]
Category: Actor RPF, Twilight RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-21
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 16:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Jen met Rob through Craigslist. He posted an ad looking for a roommate, and was brutally honest and realistic about himself: "I am filthy, lazy, and generally disgusting. If you live with me, you should be prepared to accept this or murder me. I would prefer the former, but if you pay enough rent, I am willing to negotiate."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Prohibitive Standards of Hygiene

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Affectionate mocking of famous people, disregard for cleanliness and hygiene

"We're out of toilet paper," Rob says, in a kind of vaguely detached tone, as if he's relating an interesting piece of trivia he learned from Wikipedia. Which he does fairly regularly. Rob is one of those people who is incapable of looking up just one thing on Wikipedia. He always loses hours of his life when he goes on there.

"I know," says Jen. "I just went in the alley."

Jen met Rob through Craigslist. He posted an ad looking for a roommate, and was brutally honest and realistic about himself: "I am filthy, lazy, and generally disgusting. If you live with me, you should be prepared to accept this or murder me. I would prefer the former, but if you pay enough rent, I am willing to negotiate."

It was a match made in wherever she and Rob will go when they die. Whatever that place is, it is gross.

Rob looks in the fridge. "We don't even have tissues?" he asks.

"If we do, they're not in the fridge," Jen points out. "Probably," she adds, after a second. These things can happen.

Rob makes a vague noise. "Why did you go outside?" he asks. "It's not like you _can't_ go without toilet paper. Can't you just shake off? Like a dog?"

"I was outside, and I remembered," says Jen. "I figured I could piss outside, or buy toilet paper."

"Fair enough," says Rob. "There's a toilet at Starbucks, right?"

Jen rolls her eyes. Rob has this epic crush on the late shift barista at their local Starbucks. Her name is Kristen, and Jen agrees that she's fairly cute. She's surly, which everyone who goes to their Starbucks at the late shift deserves, them included. Rob has not really figured out how to get beyond the first step of having a crush on a barista, which is buying a lot of coffee. And cakeballs. Jen might be addicted to cakeballs. They're amazing. "Do you expect me to change out of my pajama pants? Once they're on, they do not come off unless I can be pantless. You know this."

"What do I care?" asks Rob. "C'mon."

Jen moved to New York after high school to theoretically start acting. And she does, mostly. It's just that acting is kind of a spotty job at her current level, so she's out of work as often as she's in it, and between plays, she has to do a variety of other things to make money and pass the time. It doesn't mean she's unhappy--she loves New York, and her life is fairly awesome. Some people take getting stoned watching bad reality TV marathons with for hours on end with her greasy roommate as a sign of failure.

Those people are wrong, and they should feel bad.

Anyway, Jen loves New York generally and their neighborhood specifically. She doesn't go out without mace, but that's just because mace is always a good idea. It's kind of sketchy, but she's never actually had a problem. Everyone's usually drunk or stoned or both, and she likes it. It's this close-knit community of burnouts.

"Fuck you, Pattinson!" someone yells, as soon as they leave the building. Jen can't see who it is, and too many people yell at Rob to narrow it down. From their tone, she can't even tell if they're angry. It's hard to tell with people who swear at Rob.

"He's pissed I made more than him today," Rob says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "It's not _my_ fault. I never said I was homeless. I just sit on the street and people throw money at me. I don't know what his problem is."

"Well, you have a home," Jen points out, mildly. "He doesn't. And you're taking his money."

"Our apartment is roughly the size of a large box and still smells like urine," says Rob.

"True."

Another guy in a shabby coat approaches Rob and they have some sort of conversation. Rob gains a few bucks and loses some weed. Jen is pretty sure that if he filmed his daily interactions with the homeless people in their neighborhood, it would be YouTube sensation. Rob argues that people would want him to shower and look presentable.

This is also why they have never attempted to do amateur porn. They'd probably have to shower and shave and possibly _wax_. It's just not worth it.

Starbucks is modestly crowded, as usual. This area is cheap and grungy and very popular with people who moved to the city hoping to become creative types and mostly just drink and smoke a lot. In fact, the only person in the entire Starbucks who is not dreaming of being the next great writer/actor/singer/triple-threat is Kristen herself, who is getting her masters' in sociology.

Kristen smiles at them as they come in, which is a sign she really likes them. Kristen doesn't smile at customers much.

Rob, who has the survival instincts and common sense of a rabid and mostly dead raccoon, ignores Kristen and immediately goes over to place his order with Jesse, the aspiring playwright/successful cat hoarder who is the only other person on the late shift. Rob will periodically make noises about how Jen should pick up Jesse so they can do a double date of some kind, but Jen is pretty sure that wouldn't work. Jesse is a cat person and Jen, well--it's not like Jen doesn't like pets, she's just bad enough at keeping herself alive, let alone something else. She guesses they kind of have a pet rat, in that there is a rat in their apartment building and they are not actively trying to kill it. And they're so bad at cleaning up after themselves that it might count as feeding the thing.

Rob calls it Zippy.

Anyway. Jen does not want to date Jesse Eisenberg, and Rob can suck it.

"Hey," says Kristen, with a slight wave.

"Hey," says Jen.

"Cakeballs?"

"Yup."

Kristen leans down and looks in the display case. "We have ten left."

"I will take all of them."

Kristen laughs. "Got it. How's the play going?"

Jen bounces a little. For all she's generally apathetic, she _loves_ acting. "It's great. The last show is this weekend, actually. I'm bummed."

"But she'll have more time to hang out with me," Rob says, coming over and putting his arm around her. Jen can't tell if Rob is trying to make Kristen jealous with this, or doesn't actually understand that being very close with another girl might send the wrong signals to Kristen. Rob's brain is a terrifying mystery.

"Unfortunately," Jen says, accepting her bag of cakeballs from Kristen. "How's school?"

Kristen shrugs. "The usual. Professors being unreasonably demanding, too much reading, but I like it, so it works out."

Jesse comes over and nudges Kristen. "Hey, did you tell them about the thing?"

"The thing?" Kristen asks.

"The open mic thing."

"Oh, yeah!" Kristen smiles at them; Rob looks dazed. "We're starting an open mic night."

"Is that allowed?" asks Jen. "It doesn't go against Starbucks corporate policy or something?"

Kristen shrugs. "We're starting one," she says, which is not totally an answer. "On Tuesdays. You guys should come."

Rob fails to say anything for a long time, so Jen steps in. "Yeah, awesome! Sounds great. We'll be there."

"With balls on," says Rob quickly. "I mean bells."

"More likely balls," says Jen. "Cakeballs. Knowing us."

Kristen laughs, and Rob sags with relief. "Yeah," he says. "Knowing us."

Rob spends the next few days frantically trying to figure out what he can do for open mic night. It's not that fun for Jen, because he is stressed but _doesn't_ want to get high or drunk, except on Xanax. So she just does it alone. _Say Yes to the Dress_ is a lot less fun when Rob is ripping his hair out and trying to figure out rhyme schemes than it is when he's supplying funny voices.

"What about RPattz?" he says, on Saturday morning. Jen's not sure he slept.

"What about it?"

"I think that should be my rap name."

"Are you doing rap?" asks Jen. "I thought you were doing slam poetry."

Rob makes a face. "Aren't they the same thing?"

"I don't know," says Jen. "You're the poet."

"I thought they were the same thing. Wiki it for me, yeah?"

Jen scans the wikipedia article, mostly because she knows if Rob does it himself, he will not emerge for several hours. "I think it can be," she says. "It's kind of whatever you want."

"Excellent," says Rob. "Then my stage name is RPattz."

"Can you rap?" she asks. Rob is theoretically in a band, in that he owns a guitar, knows three dudes who own other instruments, and sometimes they meet up and make noise. They are not a band in the sense of playing songs, getting gigs, or having any kind of appreciable talent.

"It can't be hard, right?" asks Rob. "Loads of people do it."

"I'll bring a camera," says Jen.

Even without the hobo show, Rob is a little bit YouTube famous. Well, okay, they both are, because Jen does the filming and also sometimes appears for commentary. They don't make enough consistently hilarious stuff to really be big, but they've had a few videos of Rob drunkenly rambling go viral, and if they were better at life, they could probably monetize it. Except Rob thinks that planning and scripting would destroy the purity of his vision. Whatever that means.

But Rob Pattinson--sorry, _RPattz_ \--doing slam poetry? Yeah, Jen is pretty sure that one's going to be a hit.

Sunday, her play closes, which means that Monday and Tuesday are theoretically days for loafing around doing nothing, but, again, Rob is stressing out.

"What do I wear?" he asks. "I literally have nothing clean. All my underwear is so foul, I'm wearing a cloth napkin with safety pins fashioned into a kind of loin cloth right now."

"Where did you get a cloth napkin?" asks Jen. It says something about their lives that nothing else in this sentence is a shock.

"Stole it from work," says Rob.

"Are you still working there?" Rob had a brief stint as a waiter a few weeks ago, but his lack of personal hygiene and customer service proved to be too much of a hurdle.

"No," says Rob. "But Bruce didn't know that." He sighs. "Time for a trip to the laundromat, yeah?"

"Yeah," Jen agrees.

They have an old shopping cart which Rob accepted as payment for weed at some point, which they usually leave in the alley with a bike lock and a camo net on top. They have never actually used it for groceries (neither of them being forward-thinking enough to have made a shopping list, ever), but whenever they need to do laundry, they pile all of their clothes into it and wheel it down to Surf and Suds, their local laundromat. Jen is pretty sure they look homeless, which is not really a surprise. She thinks they look homeless 90% of the times they leave the house together.

"Oh, bollocks," says Rob, as soon as they're in the door, and throws himself behind one of the banks of laundry machines. Jen isn't sure what his plan was, but she's confident it was not to hit his head on an open door, make a huge noise, and draw everyone's attention, so she's comfortable declaring it a failure.

Things become clear when she spots Kristen sitting on the dryers listening to her iPod. Although obviously she, like everyone else, is now staring at Rob. Who stands, smiles, waves, and goes over to the change machine as if all of this was performance art.

Kristen turns off her iPod and slides off the dryer, walking over to Jen. "Hey," she says.

"Hey," says Jen.

"He's kind of special, huh," says Kristen.

"The diametric opposite of smooth. And competent." As a wing-man, Jen sometimes feels she should talk Rob up. But then the girls actually talk to Rob, and the lie is instantly obvious. Besides, Kristen knows Rob. There is no way to convince her he is a real person.

"Yeah," Kristen says, but she's biting her lip a little, like she's into that.

"OH," says Rob, in a loud, stiff, bizarre voice. "HELLO. KRISTEN IT IS. SUCH A SURPRISE! TO SEE YOU HERE." He sounds like British stoner Captain Kirk.

"Hey," says Kristen, raising her eyebrows.

"We're just getting all the laundry done," says Jen. "I have a hot date tonight, so," she adds, to make clear she and Rob are absolutely and completely not involved.

"With who, your vibrator?" asks Rob, clearly confused. He's an idiot, but it probably drives the point home.

Kristen ignores him. "Oh, that sucks. I wanted to introduce you to a friend of mine tomorrow."

Now Jen's confused. "Really?"

"Yeah," says Kristen. "He's coming to the open mic thing, I thought you two would hit it off."

"Oh." Jen had never really thought Kristen thought about them much, or wanted to set her up with people. It's kind of bizarre. "Well, it's just a first date," she says. "Maybe it'll suck."

"Maybe it's a _dirty lie_ ," says Rob, who hasn't realized she's trying to help him.

"Anyway, we'll see you tomorrow, right?" says Jen brightly.

"Yeah," says Kristen. "I think my stuff's about done, so, yeah. Later."

Rob manages this weird little wave that looks more like a nervous twitch. All said, it's one of his more successful interactions with Kristen.

The guy thing nags at Jen for the rest of the day. Obviously it's not like she's unattractive, it's just that people don't often set her up. Either they think she's dating Rob, or they "don't know her type," which is usually a euphemism for "I think you're disgusting" or "I think you're a lesbian." Depending on who says it. From her grandmother, it means both.

So that Kristen has a friend who she wants to introduce is, well, _weird_. This shit just doesn't happen.

"What should _I_ wear?" she asks Rob, the next day.

"Not a cloth napkin as underwear, I can tell you that much."

"I wasn't going to," says Jen. "Seriously, who's she going to set me up with? One of her sociology friends? Maybe they think I should be a case study."

"For what?"

"I don't know, there's clearly something wrong with us."

"True," says Rob. "How do I look?"

This is a harder question to answer than Jen anticipated. Rob is dressed for--actually, there is no event for which Rob is dressed. He would fit in nowhere. He seems to be going for some sort of hip-hop formal wear, except Rob does not really understand hip-hop. It's like that time on Project Runway Kenley had to make a hip-hop outfit for Leanne, only with _Rob_.

"Um," she says. "How are you trying to look?"

Rob groans. "Is it really that bad?"

"Yes," she says. "Come on. We'll do--something."

Rob has both shaved and showered, which is always a shock. There is actually a fairly attractive person under all the layers of grease and grim. Once Jen gets him in a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt, he actually looks _nice_.

"It's like I don't even know you," she says.

"I had four Xanax to calm myself down," he says. "I don't know me either."

"I don't think Kristen chooses her sexual partners based on open mic night," says Jen. "You're probably fine."

"I wish she did," Rob says, groaning. "How else am I going to pick her up?"

"Have you considered asking her out on a date? Like normal people do?"

"Have you considered that last time I saw her, I ran into a bloody washing machine?" asks Rob. "I can't do anything like a normal person while she's around! I just--fail."

Jen feels bad and gives him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "We're going to do this," she says. "No more Xanax," she adds. "Just breathe."

"Right," says Rob. "Breathe."

As it turns out, Rob's rhymes are neither tight nor fresh, and he is incapable of busting moves. He's so incredibly bad at whatever it is he's doing (Jen hesitates to call it "poetry," "art," or even "communication") that it comes back around to being amazing. RPattz is not a poet, but he's definitely _something_.

"RPattz?" asks Kristen. They'd been watching for a while in mute horror, but now Rob is taking an interpretive dance break, and it's hard to keep silent when he's giving them so much to talk about. Jen would have started with "is his right arm supposed to be his penis here, or am I missing something?" but RPattz works too.

"It's his rap name," says Jen.

"Is he rapping?"

"I think he's creating an entirely new form of human expression," says Jen. She turns the camera around and smiles at it. "You heard it here first, YouTube. That right there is RPattz, and soon we will all express ourselves through spoken word, dance, and--"

"He's taking his shirt off," Kristen interjects.

"That's the Xanax," Jen tells the camera. "Shut it down."

She removes Rob from the stage, which people seem to think is part of the act, and after a moment's awed silence, there's scattered applause and nervous laughter. It's probably Rob's most successful show ever, and no one threw him spare change at the end.

"Was I awesome?" he asks.

"You were awe-inspiring," says Jen. "That's better than awesome, right?"

"Absolutely," Kristen agrees.

"Yeah, it was something," says someone else, and Jen looks up to see a guy. A guy who's dressed in a _suit_ , with a tie and everything, although he's loosened it and undone his top button. This is a person who seems to have a real job. People like that never come in here.

"Hey, Nick!" says Kristen. "Glad you could make it."

"Yeah, me too," says Nick. He's English too. Jen is doomed to be forever surrounded by weirdly attractive English guys. This one has Spock eyebrows. She's into it. "Wouldn't have wanted to miss that. Whatever that was."

"RPattz," says Rob vaguely. "I shall become legend. Spoken of in song and rhyme and--"

"Interpretive dance," Kristen supplies. "Nick, this is Jen, I was telling you about her. Jen, Nick. You guys should get acquainted. I'll take care of Rob."

"You will?" asks Rob. "Really?"

"Come on," she says, tugging him toward the audience. Jesse seems to be performing one of his plays. He brought three hats, and keeps changing them to switch between characters. He's actually not half bad.

Rob looks like he's died and gone to heaven. Considering how much Xanax he's had, he might actually think he's died and gone to heaven.

Oh well, he'll figure it out.

"So, you're Nick," says Jen.

"I'm Nick," he agrees. He's tall. And attractive. And her type. Well played, Kristen. "So, you're an actress?"

"Sort of," says Jen. "Sort of part-time actress, part-time slacker."

"Can you really slack part-time?" he asks. "I'm not really sure that's something you can do without real dedication."

Jen's surprised laugh comes out more like a snort; Nick doesn't seem to care. "That's true. If I can't do nothing 100% of the time, I should just give it up, right?"

"Oh, unquestionably."

"So, what do you do?" she asks. "You look legit. Your tie doesn't even have foodstains on it."

"Is that the measure of legitimacy?" asks Nick, laughing. "I had no idea. I'm getting my PhD in philosophy. I just have to wear the tie when I'm teaching. My adviser is an arsehole who thinks I have to look professional."

"Wow, a PhD," says Jen. "That's impressive."

"You'd think," he says, leaning in like he's going to impart ancient wisdom. "It's secretly lazy."

She mirrors his movement. "Oh really?"

"Oh yeah. Tenure? That's a sweet deal. Teach two or three classes, do some office hours, tons of leave, summers off--it's going to be great."

"So you're going to school now so you can be lazy in the future?"

"Pretty much."

"Hmm," she says, tapping her chin. "I don't know. I think that's half-assed slacking. Planning ahead? Come on. Not allowed."

Nick laughs. "You're right, you're right. I apologize. I am a motivated young man and upstanding citizen."

"Damn straight."

He laughs again, and then looks at her sidelong, like he's considering something. "D'you want to get dinner with me sometime?" he asks.

"Did Kristen tell you I'm kind of disgusting?"

"Kristen is kind of disgusting. _I'm_ kind of disgusting."

"Yeah?" Jen asks. "Prove it."

"How do you prove something like that?"

"I once turned my underwear inside out for a week instead of doing laundry," says Jen, instantly.

"Oh," says Nick, surprised, but not repulsed. Bonus points for Nick. He considers. "I used to brush my teeth with mint Schnapps at university."

She raises her eyebrows. "Really."

"I did!" he says. "I didn't want to spend money on toothpaste and alcohol, so I got mint-flavored stuff and used it for both. And as mouthwash. And to clean my shower once."

"What made you stop?"

"Cavities," says Nick. "Also, mint alcohol is disgusting, I realized I could get very cheap vodka and very cheap toothpaste and still come out ahead."

Jen considers. "Your offering has been deemed worthy," she tells him. "That's gross."

"Does that mean you'll go out with me?"

Jen grins. "Yes it does."

Later, as she and Rob are stumbling home (they're not drunk, but stumbling is their default gait when they're together), she says, "Do you think it's bad that we just hang out with people as nasty as we are?"

"Huh?" asks Rob.

"Doesn't it just encourage our awful habits and make us worse people?"

"Nah," says Rob. "We'd be bad people anyway, and then we'd just feel guilty all the time. This way, we're happy."

Jen laughs. "Good point."

"I think I got to second base," he adds, as they start up the stairs.

"You're not sure? How do you not know if you get to second base?"

"I can't remember which one second is. Is it groping, or putting your tongue in her ear?"

"Groping," says Jen.

"Then I did not make it to second base," says Rob. He doesn't sound particularly disappointed.

"Still, tongue in her ear," says Jen. "That's pretty good." She pauses. "I've got a date."

"Excellent," says Rob. "I'm going to pass out. Feed Zippy, will you?"

"He's not actually a pet," she says.

"And if we don't feed him, he never will be."

Jen can't argue with that logic, so she finds some molding cheese and puts it on the floor. "Night, RPattz!" she yells.

There's a sort of muffled noise from the pile of shit Rob likes to sleep on, and Jen smiles. She'd rather not be a real person any day.


End file.
